NASA Chief Bolden's Muslim Remark to Al-Jazeera Causes Stir

By
Michelle Spitzer, Florida Today
|
July 7, 2010 05:11pm ET

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden speaks during a press conference, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010, at the National Press Club in Washington, where the it was announced that NASA has awarded $50 million through funded agreements to further the commercial sector's capability to support transport of crew to and from low Earth orbit.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The White House and NASA on Tuesday
defended comments that
the nation's top space official made on the Arabic news network
Al-Jazeera
about one of his "foremost" tasks being to reach out to the Muslim
world.

"When I became the NASA
administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three
things," Bolden
said in the interview which aired last week. "One, he wanted me to help
re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me
to
expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps
foremost, he
wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage
much more
with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their
historic
contribution to science, math and engineering."

On Fox News Channel, commentator
Charles Krauthammer called Bolden's
comments "a new height of fatuousness. NASA was established
to get
America into space and to keep us there. This idea of 'to feel good
about your
past scientific achievements' is the worst kind of group therapy,
psycho-babble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy. If I
didn't
know that Obama had told him this, I'd demand the firing of Charles
Bolden."

White House spokeswoman Moira Mack
said the president's
intention is collaboration.

"The president has always said that
he wants NASA to engage
with the world's best scientists and engineers as we work together to
push the
boundaries of exploration," Mack wrote in an e-mail.